One form of ground stake according to the prior art comprises a head portion with a series of tapering elongated orthogonal fins depending from the head portion as exemplified by FIGS. 1a and 1b. The head portion includes a flat surface for receiving the impact of a pounding implement for driving the stake into the ground and may also include one or more flanges to enable the attachment of ropes or other elements.
One difficulty encountered with prior art ground stakes arises from the tapering of the ground stake to a sharp point at its lowermost end. Because of the reduced effective diameter near the end, the end may be susceptible to cracking, bending or completely snapping off when driven into hard ground.
The stakes may also be subject to failure along the fins near the top of the stake. The fins at the top of the stake extend away from the axis to a greater extent than the portion of the fins near the tip of the stake and accordingly are more prone to bending or failure, particularly along the outer edges of the fins.
Ground stakes may be made of metal or plastic. The latter generally provides more structural strength than metal for the same weight of material and, depending on the choice of metal, may be lighter and more economical to produce. In addition, plastic is inherently corrosion resistant and can therefore be used instead of a separate coating or sheath or a more expensive corrosion resistant metal alloy.
However, the use of plastic for ground stakes may result in increased difficulty in driving the stake. The smooth nature of plastic causes the driving implement to sometimes slip off the head portion of the stake resulting in misalignment of the stake in the ground and possibly damage to the stake. Plastic stakes also tend to be more susceptible to the failure and breakage problems mentioned earlier than are metal stakes.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide an improved ground stake which overcomes the above limitations.
This and other objects of the invention will be appreciated by reference to the summary of the invention and to the detailed description of the preferred embodiment that follow.